Winamp lovers beg AOL to make Winamp open source

Last week, AOL announced the impending death of Winamp, saying that the 16-year-old media player would be shut down within a month.

"Winamp.com and associated Web services will no longer be available past December 20, 2013. Additionally, Winamp Media players will no longer be available for download. Please download the latest version before that date," AOL announced.

But fans of the venerable software have launched a "Save Winamp" website and petition asking AOL either to keep Winamp alive or to open source its code.

"The history of digital music started with Winamp," says the group, which includes nine developers who have pledged to improve Winamp if the source code is released. "Our goal is to convince Nullsoft [the AOL subsidiary behind Winamp] to release the Winamp source code and we will take it further in an open-source way."

The petition was started by Web hosting company owner Peter Zawacki of Australia, and it has more than 12,000 supporters thus far. "If AOL allows it to go open source it WILL live on forever and be in the hands of people who love it and use it every day," the petition states.

We've asked AOL if the company is willing to release Winamp's source code but haven't yet received a response.